The Mentor

It was them against the world. Battling in the corners, hunkering down for hours of travel between games and hitting the town on the road. For a professional athlete, teammates can make all the difference between a good season and a bad season—on and off the ice. Every year brings a new group of faces and for Trevor throughout his NHL career, a new group of guys to take under his wing. Trevor’s influence was far-reaching, but we rounded up a handful of guys who skated alongside the Canucks icon, to take a closer look at the mentor and the man Canucks fans and teammates know and love.

“Trevor is truly a unique person. He treats every individual with a tremendous amount of integrity and respect on and off the ice. He is a natural leader, and set a great example of work ethic. As a teammate, he was someone I admired because of the way he conducted himself and I knew I could openly talk to him about anything.

To this day I approach him for advice and highly value his opinion. I feel fortunate that I have had the opportunity to meet and play hockey with Trevor.”

-Mason Raymond, spent first year in League as Trevor Linden’s teammate, 2007-08

“He was a great athlete. I think he was a leader of men from a young age and you could see that in his game throughout his career. It didn’t take him long to get an assistant captaincy on his jersey from a young age—in junior or in the NHL for that matter.

“He played for Vancouver against me when I was playing in Philadelphia and Ryan McGill and myself we were hurt and snuck in after their pre game skate and sewed up his cuffs on his pants and his suit coat. I think he figured out pretty quick that it was some buddies from junior playing a practical joke on him.

“I think from a young age he played hard every shift. He had intensity and took every game seriously. His team needed points every night from him, to get better as a hockey team. He took winning seriously and took losing seriously as well. If we lost a game it wasn’t a happy time for him … He was a kind of guy who took every loss to heart and wanted to come back the next night with an even better effort.”

-Mark Pederson, teammate for Team Canada at World Juniors in 1988 and for the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers, 1985-88.

“I got to know Trevor from 1991-93 and he was a young captain while I was an old-timer but he was a very mature captain.

“Trevor had a great way of connecting with the underprivileged or struggling—that would be a little baby in the Children’s Hospital all the way to people just having a tough time. He had a great way to make them feel comfortable and add value to their lives. I think that’s why the community fell in love with him.

“In our business there’s some phraseology that is said in the dressing room that very few people know about. One of those is ‘he comes to play’. When someone says ‘he comes to play’ about your game, that’s a very good thing. Trevor was one of those guys who most nights or every night, you could say ‘he came to play’.”